YMMV / Worst Jobs In History

• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the Rural episode, the shepherding expert tells Tony how medieval shepherds castrated male sheep using their mouths. Tony comments on how he's glad he never had to experience it firsthand. Guess what sheep-related job Mike Rowe had to do several years later?
• Squick: What did you expect from a show that centers around jobs that involve blood, guts, urine and feces? But keep in mind, without these gross jobs, history as we know it wouldn't have happened.
  • Making a house in the Dark Ages involves horse dung and straw.
  • Fulling involves the cleansing of cloth (particularly wool) to eliminate oils, dirt, and other impurities, and to make it thicker. And how does it work? By marching up and down for hours in a vat full of stale urine, a rich source of ammonia.
  • The gong farmers were sewer workers whose only tools were a bucket and a shovel. And keep in mind, the diet of rich British folk mostly consisted of meat, so expect a lot of blockages. And sometimes, they died due to the methane gases.
  • The violin string making sounds simple, right? Wrong. It involves disemboweling a sheep, then removing the feces from the intestines, then braiding the intestines to make the violin strings.
  • The tanner makes leather using a process that involves urine and liquid feces. Tony even mentions that it is without a doubt the worst job he can ever think of.

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